


Tell Me Pretty Lies

by DetectiveJoan



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Bisexual Character of Color, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12967794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveJoan/pseuds/DetectiveJoan
Summary: A series of bad decisions.





	Tell Me Pretty Lies

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon Joan as Japanese-American and I'm...leaning towards the idea of Owen as Native-American? But I'm as White as Lauren Shippen is, so apologies if I've mangled anything. 
> 
> Title from [idfc by blackbear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhkwE4E8IMo) (contains explicit language)
> 
> _Tell me pretty lies_  
>  _Look me in the face_  
>  _Tell me that you love me_  
>  _Even if it's fake_

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Green,” Agent Bright says with a polite smile.

“Please, call me Owen,” he responds reflexively, because _Green_ still feels wrong to his own ears. His new coworkers keep telling him he’ll get used to it, but he’s skeptical — and not just because they clearly never had to weigh the AM’s surname assignment against the way their ancestors were stripped of their names to ease assimilation.

He tries not to think about any of it too much.

“Joan,” she responds warmly. Maybe he’s reaching, but the look she gives him feels like solidarity.

///

There are other people besides the two of them working in their department, of course, but he and Joan seem to gravitate to each other. Mostly their friendship consists of sitting next to each other at staff meetings and sharing a table in the employee cafeteria on days when their lunch breaks line up.

It’s not exactly how he’s made friends in the past, but then it is quite difficult to build a thriving social life when it’s mildly illegal to talk about your job after hours.

And on the other hand, he does simply, genuinely enjoy talking with her.

///

Joan’s research is absolutely fascinating and Owen had been sincere when he promised to forward her any relevant resources that he found, but he honestly hadn’t been expecting a goldmine of a patient to land on his desk a mere week later.

“This is amazing!” she enthuses, flipping through the file he’d passed over her cubicle wall. “This fills _such_  a hole in my research, I couldn’t even _describe_ — good lord, I could kiss you right now.”

She doesn’t mean anything by it. Obviously. She’s not even looking at him.

“I’m happy to help,” he says honestly, definitely not blushing.

///

They catch the same elevator downstairs one Friday evening.

“Any fun plans for the weekend?” he asks.

“Working on my research,” she says, pushing the ground floor button six times. She looks both earnest and extremely exhausted; he’s never gone for his Doctorate but he remembers that frenetic desperation from the last year of his Masters. “As always.”

“Ah. Well.” He fiddles with his watch. “Well, if you ever want to take a break, maybe see a movie or something — as friends, of course, it would be highly inappropriate to —”

“Sure,” she very mercifully interrupts. “I’d love to.”

///

They walk to the theater from her apartment to avoid downtown parking fees. Something about seeing her in jeans instead of her usual pencil skirt makes all his thoughts kind of fuzzy, but he focuses on keeping his hands to himself.

Joan evidently has no such compunction. On the way home, she loops her arm through his and leans her head against his shoulder.

“Would you like to come in?” she asks when they reach her front door.

He hesitates. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Joan.”

Does he sound wistful?

The look she gives him is inscrutable. “Okay.”

///

Before Owen had realized he was never going to come out, he’d dated this boy, Peter. Secrecy didn’t hamper their relationship much; they were too poor to go out, so they spent date nights watching bad movies, crammed together on Peter’s tiny dorm room bed.

It was good, until it wasn’t.

“I would just like to be able to tell my parents about my _boyfriend_ ,” Peter had started whining semi- regularly.

Owen usually felt a thrill at that title, but in those moments he only felt fear and shame and the certainty that the entire relationship had been a huge mistake.

///

“Change your mind?” Joan asks dryly when he shows up at her door again Sunday evening. She’s just barely not smirking.

“Maybe.”

She looks like half a disaster, wearing paint- stained sweatpants, with her hair tied in the messy approximation of a bun. He counts at least three pencils sticking out of it.

God help him, he’s into the whole look.

“If we do this,” he says slowly, “we can’t tell anyone.”

Joan makes a face. “Obviously. You think I want Ellie knowing about my love life?”

It’s all the reassurance he needs to step over the threshold and kiss her.

///

Joan clicks off the alarm clock. Owen’s expecting her to collapse back against the pillows beside him, but she flips back the covers and moves to sit up instead. He catches her wrist and pulls her back down into a slow kiss.

“You in a rush to be somewhere?” he mumbles.

“Yeah, work.” He can hear her roll her eyes.

“We can be a few minutes late,” he reasons, wrapping one arm around her waist.

She easily shakes him off. “We can do lazy mornings on the weekend.”

“You do research on the weekends,” he objects.

“I can make time.”

///

Work is always Joan’s first priority. Her research is second.

After that it’s probably her family. She only speaks about them vaguely, but she’s evidently extremely close to her little brother, who calls her at least once a week.

Owen might be her fourth priority, but it’s hard to say.

He wouldn’t categorize their relationship as “dating” exactly, but “coworkers who are also friends with benefits” is a mildly clunkier phrase. He marks it down in his column of things to not think about too much, right below all the gooey romantic stuff that he wants more than Joan does.

///

Owen wants to help when Joan’s brother goes missing, but there isn’t much to be done.

It takes him months to put together that they’re actually looking for that mimic in Tier 5. In his defense, Joan had never told him her real last name, or that Mark Bryant was atypical.

When he confronts Wadsworth she practically laughs him out of her office.

“You’d end your career? Over this?” she cackles. “Please, you know you’d be perfectly fine with it if you didn’t think you were in love with Joan.”

He’s suddenly tight- lipped.

“Put it out of your mind, Green.”

///


End file.
